Another wonderful adventure is coming to an end. On Sunday Rachel left us to return to her home in Switzerland. Later today we start our journey home with a trolley ride to the Valparaiso bus terminal, followed by a 2 hour bus ride to Santiago, and then two flights later we will arrive home for a 6 month pit stop.
Valparaiso was a nice finishing touch for us. Since it is built on 45 different hills facing the Pacific Ocean you can get as much exercise as your heart desires just by walking around the city, and we did plenty of that. This old but lovely city has lots of history (major port city before the Panama Canal was built, home to regular earthquake activity) and not only colourful hillside houses but extremely artistic wall murals, graffiti and street art throughout the city. We also took rides on a couple of their 14 active ascensores (used to be 33 of these hillside funiculars) rather than climbing a few hundred steps on days when we wanted to save our energy to spend more time walking downhill. On another day we took a city bus to Vina del Mar (a newer beach resort town that seemed a lot older than we were there 6 years ago) and then walked back to Valpo along the coastline (15 km). When we weren't having meals at our Airbnb apartment we enjoyed some nice meals (seafood almost every day) at outdoor restaurants. And of course we had plenty of Chilean wine, known more for their Vino Blancos and Carmeneres (red).
While we had a fabulous 2.5 months in Argentina (mostly Patagonia), the entire trip highlight was Antarctica. We have some memorable stories, photos and videos of our time there and will be happy to share them with our family and friends when we get back home. Our next foreign destination is a mystery at this time (all 7 continents now explored since retirement) but you can be sure we will cook something up over the summer........we are embedded with the wanderlust gene (DRD4-7R, check it out) and travelling is always more fun without a plan anyways.
Carpe Diem.
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| Vina del Mar coastline, looking back towards Valparaiso. |
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| One of Valpo's 45 hills. |
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| An example of the street art found in Valpo. The artists get written permission from the home owner before starting and then proceed with their work. |
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| Every street seemed to have art likes this so it was pleasurable to walk around the city. |
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| Even the garbage trucks looked pretty. When I was about to take this picture, one of the 'sanitary engineers' ran in front to have his picture taken in front of the masterpiece. |
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| Colourful steps on the way to one of the many small plazas in the city, along with one of the many stray dogs. You had to be careful not to have any direct eye contact with the dogs otherwise they would follow you hoping for either a snack or to be taken home with you. All were friendly. |
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| One of the ascensores that we took to avoid a long steep stairwell. The cost was always .20 cents and there would be two cars, one going up and another down, both at the same time. |
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| The battle of the cervezas between Rachel and I. Mine was on the left and hers on the right. |
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| We took a harbour cruise one day and came across a couple of harbour seals relaxing.......an looking the wrong way towards the lovely Valpo hillsides. |
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| The Valpo mercado. We always like to visit the local markets for fresh fruit and vegetables, and occasionally some small fish (anchovies, sardines) which I enjoy. |
